Editorial: How to get illegal guns off the streets

Some of the handguns confiscated by the Grand Rapids Police Department.

Criminals and handguns are a bad combination. The mix can result in everything from mere calamity to outright murder.

A series of Press stories last week detailed the trail of stolen guns in the Grand Rapids area. The reports illustrated the many ways bad actors abuse purloined firearms to cause trouble and take lives. The problem is especially acute in urban areas.

Anecdotally, police say, it’s getting worse, with more young people packing heat.
The most effective responses are citizen vigilance, individual responsibility and continued cooperation between federal and local law enforcement in prosecuting gun thieves.

This spring Grand Rapids police saw a rash of shootings in city streets, though casualties were limited. In 2009, Grand Rapids police received 382 illegal weapons, most pistols and revolvers. Eighty percent of illegal guns recovered in Michigan have been on the street for at least three years. The average time between a firearm being stolen and turning up in a criminal context — what police call the “time to crime” — is a long 13 years.

In one case a gun stolen from a home in Lowell was brandished at police a short three months later in a shoot-out on Grand Rapids’ Northeast Side. The parolee holding the gun, Gabriel Hood, was killed by police in the encounter. In another instance a handgun nabbed 34 years ago turned up just this year in a locker at East Kentwood High School.

Criminals who steal firearms sometimes do so because they need money, drugs or perhaps protection from rival gangs. Their actions echo far beyond their own narrow worlds.

Their criminality becomes the community’s problem.

That makes it imperative that gun owners adequately secure their firearms in their homes. Police say most guns linked to local crimes were stolen in burglaries by family or friends who needed the money. People whose guns are stolen are required by state law to report the theft to police. Those reports don’t always happen, though they unfailingly should. Sometimes gun owners tell police they don’t know the theft has occurred and sometimes they suspect a family member and may want to protect them.

The Press is taking a direct hand in another solution: citizen action. The newspaper has teamed with Silent Observer to create a gun hotline that will field anonymous tips on illegal firearms. The Press secured a $5,000 grant from the Center on Media, Crime & Justice. People providing information that leads to an arrest will receive a $250 reward. The tips can be made through phone calls, text messages or the Web. Whistleblowers’ identities are closely protected.

The long average time to crime in Michigan — more than a decade — creates opportunities for guns to be identified and removed from circulation before they are put to nefarious use. Recovered guns can be tested in a state forensics lab against other evidence to perhaps advance stalled criminal cases elsewhere.

In another response federal agents at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have teamed with local law enforcement in Grand Rapids and elsewhere to aggressively pursue gun thieves. The pairing allows for tougher federal penalties, in the form of longer sentences, to be applied in some cases.

The concern here is not with citizens exercising their legitimate constitutional right to keep and bear arms. The concern is with criminals abusing the right for dangerous and murderous ends.

Stopping this activity should be a shared goal for all sides of the gun debate. Protect legal activity. Prosecute illegal activity. Report stolen guns. Bring the hammer down on criminals who traffic in them.